1Cor. 6:18 Flee fornication.
Amplified: Shun immorality and all sexual looseness [flee from impurity in thought, word, or deed].
Barclay: Strenuously avoid fornication at all times.
Berkley: Shun sexual immorality.
ESV: Flee from sexual immorality.
ISV: Keep on running away from sexual immorality.
Moffatt: Shun immorality!
NLT: Run from sexual sin!
Phillips: Avoid sexual looseness like the plague!
Wuest: Be fleeing from fornication.
Flee - The present imperative is a command calling for all believers (flee = second person plural) to continually strenuously avoid the snares strewn about by variegated sexual temptations.
Flee, English dictionaries say this means to run away from danger or evil, to scurry to a place of security!
flee does not mean stay put and rationalize such a foolish course of action by saying "Steel is tempered by heat and thereby becomes stronger. I'll stand fast and become stronger by resisting the fiery temptation". Wrong! That is not Biblical and is a "surefire" guarantee for moral failure, dear believer!
Yes, you are correct, God tells us to "Resist the tempter" (Jas 4:7-note) but not the "temptation" to sexual sin. Instead "flee from the temptress" (Prov. 5:8,6:25,7:25). We are called not to a moderate degree of resistance to immorality, but to radical separation from it. The command says to "flee" not "flirt" with fornication!
Flee (escape) (5343) (pheugo) means to flee away in the sense of to take to flight in order to seek safety. To flee in the sense of to escape something, being made safe from danger by eluding or avoiding it (He 11:34-note, Mt 3:7, Acts 27:30). To flee in the sense of to avoid, shun (Webster says "shun" = to avoid deliberately and especially habitually), have nothing to do with (1Co 6:18). To vanish or disappear. Pheugo is the root of our English word "fugitive" defined as one who escapes from something or someone.
Do not stop to dispute about it; make a practice [present imperative] of flying at once.' So also of idolatry, which was so closely allied with impurity, (1Co 10:14).
Paul doesn’t tell us to be brave and resist the lustful passion of sexual immorality, but to flee from its very presence. Many have fallen because they underestimated the power of lustful passion, or thought they would “test” themselves and see how much they could “take.” Instead, we should follow the example of Joseph, who fled from sexual immorality - even when it cost him something to do so (Genesis 39:7-21). “Some sins, or solicitations to sin, may be reasoned with; in the above cases, if you parley you are undone; reason not, but fly!” (Clarke)
We are reminded Paul uses the Greek word porneia, which refers to a broad range of sexual sin. To flee sexual immorality means more than just to not have sexual intercourse with someone we are not married to. It means to flee sexual gratification short of, or apart from, intercourse with someone we are not married to. It means to flee sexual gratification or thrills one might find in any and all illicit sexual practices.
Before Christ
We chased after sin.
Now after Christ
Sin chases after us!
1 Cor. 6:18
Flee fornication - A solemn command of God - as explicit as any that thundered from Mount Sinai. None can disregard it with impunity - none can violate it without being exposed to the awful vengeance of the Almighty. There is force and emphasis in the word “flee” pheugate. Man should escape from it; he should not stay to reason about it; to debate the matter; or even to contend with his propensities, and to try the strength of his virtue. There are some sins which a man can resist; some about which he can reason without danger of pollution. But this is a sin where a man is safe only when he flies; free from pollution only when he refuses to entertain a thought of it; secure when he seeks a victory by flight, and a conquest by retreat. Let a man turn away from it without reflection on it and he is safe. Let him think, and reason, and he may be ruined. “The very passage of an impure thought through the mind leaves pollution behind it.” An argument on the subject often leaves pollution; a description ruins; and even the presentation of motives against it may often fix the mind with dangerous inclination on the crime. There is no way of avoiding the pollution but in the manner prescribed by Paul; there is no man safe who will not follow his direction. How many a young man would be saved from poverty, want, disease, curses, tears, and hell, could these two words be made to blaze before him like the writing before the astonished eyes of Belshazzar Dan. 5, and could they terrify him from even the momentary contemplation of the crime. - A.B.
An excellent illustration of fleeing immorality is found in the account of Joseph when he was tempted to sin by Potiphar’s wife. Joseph addressing her advances declared,
There is no one greater in this house than I, and he has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do this great evil, and sin against God? (Joseph feared Jehovah and so turned away from evil, Job 1:1 Why is there such a problem with porneia even in Christian circles? There is minimal to know healthy fear of God. See 2 Cor 7:1) And it came about as she spoke to Joseph day after day, that he did not listen to her to lie beside her, or be with her. Now it happened one day that he went into the house to do his work, and none of the men of the household was there inside.And she caught him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me!” And he left his garment in her hand and fled, and went outside.) (Genesis 39:9,10,11,12)
(Joseph feared God and so turned away from evil, Job 1:1 Why is there such a problem with porneia even in Christian circles? There is a minimal desire to know a healthy fear of God. See 2 Cor 7:1)
It is like the pastor who cautioned his handsome new assistant about the dangers of immorality in the ministry. The assistant said that he always did his socializing in a group setting and concluded that “there is safety in numbers.” The wise pastor replied, “Yes, that is so, but there is more safety in Exodus!” While there may be safety in numbers, sometimes there is more safety in flight!
Martyn Lloyd-Jones said,
I do not know of a single scripture—and I speak advisedly—which tells me to take my sin, the particular thing that gets me down, to God in prayer and ask him to deliver me from it and then trust in faith that he will.
Now that teaching is also often put like this: you must say to a man who is constantly defeated by a particular sin, “I think your only hope is to take it to Christ and Christ will take it from you.” But what does Scripture say in Ephesians 4:28 to the man who finds himself constantly guilty of stealing, to a man who sees something he likes and takes it? What am I to tell such a man? Am I to say, “Take that sin to Christ and ask him to deliver you?” No, what the apostle Paul tells him is this: “Let him that stole, steal no more.” Just that. Stop doing it. And if it is fornication or adultery or lustful thoughts, again: Stop doing it, says Paul. He does not say, “Go and pray to Christ to deliver you.” No. You stop doing that, he says, as becomes children of God.
SIN...
Will take you farther than you ever thought you’d stray
Will leave you so lost, you think you’ll never find your way
Will keep you longer than you ever thought you’d stay
Will cost you more than you ever thought you’d pay!
One man's story,
For long after his conversion he did not dare even to go near that part of the city where his godless companions of former days lived. But one day a matter of business called him there, and as he was walking along the street he suddenly saw one of the beautiful yet wicked companions of his folly. The moment her eyes lit upon him her face was illuminated with delight, and she came running with outstretched arms and said, "Austin! where have you been for so long? We have missed you so," and he turned and gathered up his long philosopher's gown and started to run. It was not a very dignified proceeding for a doctor, a professor of rhetoric, to run up the street with a godless girl running after him. She called to him, "Austin, Austin, why do you run? It is only I!"
He looked back and exclaimed,
"I run because it is not I."
Immorality (4202) (porneia [word study] from porneuo = to commit fornication, to play the harlot from pornos = a male prostitute) originally referred to any excessive behavior or lack of restraint, but eventually became associated with sexual excess and indulgence, of every kind of extramarital, unlawful, or unnatural sexual intercourse. Our English word pornography is derived from porneia + graph = a writing and thus pornography (or colloquially "porn") is thus a writing (or picture) about sexual sin. Christianity brought chastity into the world of pagan idolatry where sexual immorality was not only condoned, but regarded as normal. Sadly, twentieth-century America has reverted back to the “normality of sexual immorality” and the revival fire of the Christian faith is desperately needed.
Porneia includes including (but not limited to) adultery, premarital sex, homosexuality, bestiality, incest, and prostitution. As an aside, porneia refers primarily to sins of the flesh, but those sins can never be divorced from the sins of the mind or heart, because all sin is related. Sin in one area always makes us more susceptible to sin in other areas.
Alia vitia pugnando, sola libido fugiendo vincitur -
Other vices may be conquered in fight,this only by flight.